Otome, Anime & Manga

Winter Anime 2019 – First Impressions (Part 1)

After skipping Fall 2018, I’m back with my seasonal anime first impressions. Welcome everyone, to Winter 2019, and just like last winter, we’ve got some great series to start this year off. From the dark tones of Dororo to the cute girls of Pastel Memories, this season is as colourful as it is varied. This post is the first of two, in each I’ll be reviewing the first episode of around eight anime series that peaked my interest. On the second post, I’ll announce my blogging plans. This year I also want to include a reader’s choice on which series you most want me to do weekly reviews of. The poll will be at the end of the post.

Here’s a quick rundown of my voting scale –

0-2: Wow that’s part of my life I’ll never get back

2-3: Reasonable, would need to watch the next one or two episodes to see if it’s worth continuing

4-5: That was absolutely fantastic! Give me the next episode now!

Boogiepop wa Warawanai

Describing this episode as ‘confusing’, would be putting it lightly. The episode opens with high schooler Takeda waiting for his date to arrive. Hours go by, and he’s still hoping for her to show up, and she does, except not for him. Miyashita appears in the busy street in a crazy outfit and lecturing passersby for their cold treatment of a man in trouble. From then on it only gets weirder. The series jumps from scene to scene, and you’re never entirely sure of the chronology, as the beginning and seemingly, the end of the story, are all thrown in the first episode. Each character has a disjointed hidden meaning, one that will only come together further into the series. I’m not a huge fan of diverting from linear storytelling, but this one is intriguing, and will probably be best viewed in a bing session rather than week to week. 3/5

Mob Psycho 100 II

Season one of Mob Psycho was released way back in 2016, and as I mentioned in my review of it, I almost skipped it. I was pretty put off by the art style, but after watching one episode I was hooked, and even grew to love the often wacky faces of each character. Episode one of season two is no different. The episode starts off pretty much where the last season left off, with Mob back at school and living his everyday life – school and helping Reigen out. The animations of each of the ghouls, and the fights that follow are definitely the highlight of this series, with dynamic and fluid movements and bright colours. Mob is, as always, a wonderful main character, I just want to give him a big hug! In contrast, the new writer characters comes off quite poorly, I’m unsure of what the creators were going with, with her. Hopefully she isn’t too much of a permanent feature. 4.5/5

Dororo

A samurai lord falls from grace after making a deal with a group of demons to protect his land and his interests. The price? His infant son. The boy, born without limbs and sensory organs miraculously survives and goes hunting for the demons who took everything from him. Out of all the Winter 2019 series, this is the one that I was most looking forward to, and it did not disappoint! The animation was flawless, and the first episode did a great job of introducing us to our two feature characters – Dororo and Hyakkimaru. Controversial opinion, but I’m not entirely sure that I’ll grow to like Dororo, he seems like an overly cheeky kid! But, nevertheless, I can’t wait to see where this series takes us in the coming weeks. 4/5

Pastel Memories

After the significant decline of otaku culture, Akihabara is in ruins. One of the last shops standing is the Rabbit Shed Cafe, where a group of girls work to preserve the memories of all things otaku. A majority of the episode follows the girls visiting other stores in search for a specific manga series, but the last few minutes suddenly throw the series in the realm of fantasy. I picked this series up as a whim, so wasn’t expecting the sudden shift. Throughout my viewing I did notice that there was a lot of care put into having references dotted throughout the episode, it was great to see some more obscure references rather than the typical popular ones used. In saying that, I know some of the girls’ personalities will slowly grate on my nerves, particularly Yui, the cat girl. An alright first episode, but not entirely sure if I enjoyed it. 2.5/5

I hope you all enjoyed the first part of my impressions! Like I mentioned above, vote below on which series you’d like to see weekly reviews for.

4 thoughts on “Winter Anime 2019 – First Impressions (Part 1)”

It’s funny how we had the same first impressions for the Animes we are both following: Dororo, Boogiepop and Pastel Memories. Although for Pastel Memories, for me it’s a complete number 1. It was just a complete mess for me 😛

I’m honestly really impressed with Dororo and excited to see how it develops! I would love to see weekly reviews for it since it’s one of the only anime series that is standing out to me at the moment. I’m not sure if you’re interested in reviewing new manga series as well, but a new romance series called 10 Years in the Friend Zone came out recently, and I was really impressed with the way they’re handling the pacing of the series, and the relationship between the main characters is pretty interesting too, so I highly recommend giving it a shot if a new romance manga sounds interesting to you!

I’m so excited for this week’s episode of Dororo. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with episode 1, but it really did blow me away. Ooh thank you for the suggestion. I’ve recently gotten back into romance manga, so I was planning on doing a romance manga month for February. I’ll definitely check out the series and review it then :D! Thanks again!